My son owed her honest answers too.

But I would not let those answers become a ceremony in which everyone proved love for me by humiliating him.

After a minute, she asked again, more quietly, when he had known.

He described seeing an old post and hearing that people were looking.

He had avoided calling because he feared what would happen, then because more time had passed, then because each delay made the next explanation worse.

“I kept thinking I’d do it when I had something better to tell her.”